Why Should You Believe in the Power of Your Dreams? What Are Dreams Anyway?

Believe in dreams. Have faith in the power of dreams. Your dreams can come true. But what the heck is a dream? Do you really understand that word? Millionaires and business magnets supposedly dreamt of their companies and “followed their dreams”. Huh?

One day, I divided myself into 2 parts. 🙂 I made one part an employee, (spoiler: I have never been an employee :P) and another part God (BIG spoiler: I have never been God either :P).[Edit: This was in 2009. I have since been an employee, quit jobs, worked as a freelancer, started a few micro-businesses, failed, succeeded, failed again etc.]

Then the employee-me, asked the God-me some questions about what on earth dreaming big was. And God-me, being God ripped apart the power of dreams and showed it to me. 🙂

Here’s the ‘why dream?’ conversation we had.

Employee-me (E):I have heard a lot about the phrase ‘believe in dreams’. Every movie I see has people achieving their dreams. What’s all this crap?

God (G): Now,now,don’t get carried away with the ‘believe in dreams‘ phrase. The word dream may seem “hi-fi” but it is simply an expression of what you want. Let us understand this word taking your life as an example. Take a moment, think and tell me as clearly as you can, what is it that you desire from your life right now?

E:Well, I am currently an assistant manager in my company. I want to become the manager. I want my children to excel in their studies. I want to take a long vacation with my wife and children at a place where there’s a huge, not so crowded beach. I want to buy a reasonably big house. And I want to gift my aging parents a special pension scheme.

G: Wow, so you already believe in dreams! But you cannot really call anything a dream until you have dreamt it correct? Have you actually dreamt that all that you mentioned above has come true? As soon as you have dreamt of what you really want coming true, you have a dream! Let’s get together and dream your dream for a while. Come, close your eyes.

Clearly imagine that you have become the manager of your company. You sit where the manager sits. You talk to the people he talks to. You dress like him. Imagine your day as a manager. At what time would you come home? And now when you have come home imagine your children studying and revising their notes. Imagine them asking you to explain to them their exam concepts. Imagine teaching them their subjects. Clearly see it! Now the scene changes. You and your wife and children are on a cruise. A cool breeze caresses you as you land on a beach. As you and your wife descend onto the beach you stare at the deep blue sea as your feet gently sink into the sand. There is silence. There is ease. Nothing exists but this for now. The waves make a swirling noise as they caress the shore. There are a few trees here and there. And the sun is about to set… Imagine all this clearly. Can you actually see the sea and the beach? Can you feel yourself holding your wife’s hand as you stand on the beach in this ambience? Now look at your house near the beach. Note its details. Is it surrounded by trees? What are its walls made of? What color is the door? Can you see a porch? Come, run and touch the house. Feel its solid structure. Is it differently shaped from the other houses on the beach? Are there other houses in the first place? As you go in, do you see yourself greeting your smiling aged parents who just came to visit you after they received your pension gift? Do you actually see their laughter, the sense of peace in their eyes? What are they wearing? What are they saying? How are you feeling in this instant?

E:Good God! As I went with you in the dream, I felt terrific! Cool. I like this dream thingy. So to believe in dreams is to simply imagine that what you want has already happened?

G: Yes, to believe in dreams is asking yourself what you want and seeing it actually happen before your closed eyes although nothing has happened yet practically. The difference between what you had before I made you dream and the dream you dreamt just now is:

Earlier you had a vague desire. Now you have clearly imagined in detail what you really want. You have dreamt.

E:God, you’re God for a reason I guess. I already understand what a dream is and why I could believe in dreams. But how would just imagining what I want clearly help me? I mean it feels good and all, but how the heck is that going to change anything in the real world. Why dream?

G: If you want to achieve what you want, you must clearly know what you want right? If you want a tire, you must know that it is a tire that you want. You must know exactly what the tire looks like. You must know its size and which brand you want. If you know all this, you can go to a tire shop and get your tire.

Now suppose you knew that you wanted something circular but were not sure what that thing was. How on earth could you get a tire – even though deep down you knew that a tire was what you wanted? How could the shopkeeper know that you wanted a tire? And even if you knew you wanted a tire but did not know what size or what brand you wanted, you would have to randomly take the tire the shopkeeper offered you because you never clarified to yourself exactly what you wanted.

When you believe in dreams, you let your deepest desires clearly manifest in front of your closed eyes. You think of EXACTLY what you want. You ask yourself EXACTLY what you want. You SEE it. And then you know where you want to go. You can then devise your EXACT path to get there. If you exactly know what you want, there is at least some chance of your getting it. If you are not clear about what you want, how could you get it? So dreaming helps you clarify what you want to yourself.

Dreaming also does another wonderful thing. Did you notice the emotional surge you experienced when you dreamt about what you wanted just now? When you saw yourself as the manager or enjoying the vacation? When you actually see your dream coming true in your mind’s eye, you experience a joyous emotion that spurs you on further towards your dream. When the path towards what you want seems full of obstacles, dreaming that you have achieved what you want fuels a pleasant burst of energy that makes your struggle suddenly meaningful.

E:Ah! I get it. You have talked about me clarifying to myself what I want by imagining that what I want to have has already come true. So what did all those corporate honchos and “Visionaries” do when they dreamt?

G: Oh they simply asked themselves what they wanted and clearly imagined it before it happened. That way they got clear about what they wanted and also got their adrenaline kick.

E:Right. I believe in dreams! But there’s one more doubt Goddy.

G: Shoot.

E:What’s this dreaming big then? I was watching TV yesterday and this movie star came and said – “Dream Big like me”. Huh? You said dreaming was imagining what I wanted, why dream big and small?

G: Till now we assumed that what you said you wanted was actually what you wanted. Here’s the catch. What if you actually wanted more but were restricting yourself by saying you wanted less? What if you could become the CEO of your company instead of becoming a manager? What if you could have a house in the best locality possible right next to the beach – designed by the best architect of the country? What if you and your wife could go vacationing to the most exquisite beach in the world? Or if you could gift your parents a grant of a million dollars an year? If you were offered all of these, would you refuse them? And if you wouldn’t refuse them, why didn’t you say you wanted these in the first place?

Your beliefs about reality curtail your desires. You thought that it was not possible for you to become the CEO of your company. So you imagined yourself becoming a manager. And you dreamt of becoming a manager. Since you dreamt of becoming a manager and not a CEO, you will work towards becoming a manager and not a CEO. And so at best you will become a manager but not a CEO.

Dreaming big simply means acknowledging that you have the power to want anything on this earth. And if you can want anything, you can also clearly believe in dreams about having already got what you want. It is your dream, so you can stretch it as far as you can! You can become the CEO of your company, you can acquire another company and your company can become the world leader in your line of products. In your dream.

And if you can clearly, EXACTLY, specifically believe in dreams about it, you will be able to devise a pathway to get there. So why not dream as big as possible? At worst, you will still become a manager right? And at best…..:)

Dreaming big has another aspect to it, asking yourself what you truly want. Come, let us perform another small experiment to understand this aspect of dreaming big.

Close your eyes once again. If nothing on this earth restricted you, if no one were to object to what you did, if you had all the money in the world, if you could do absolutely anything you wanted on this earth, what would you do? Where would you live? How would you spend your day? Whom would you talk to? What activities would you involve yourself in? Would you travel? Where would you love to be in this instant in such a world? Clearly imagine it in detail. Note the colors, the sounds, SEE how you would be and live in such a situation. If you are getting a massage done at a spa, feel your body being massaged, feel your muscles relax. Let your imagination soar. There’s nothing stopping you from dreaming is there? Why, you can even fly in a dream!

🙂 Open your eyes. Compare what you dreamt of now to what you dreamt of earlier – the being a manager dream. Isn’t it interesting to see that what you dreamt of this time was so different from what you dreamt of then? Doesn’t that clearly show that when you dreamt earlier you had a lot of conditioned constraints stopping you from letting go and really dreaming big? Were you not restricting yourself and NOT acknowledging what you really wanted when you dreamt earlier then?

Dreaming big can be intriguing. But it can tell you what you really, really want. Why go for anything else? Why not give what you really, really want a try and believe in dreams?

E:Oh God, I want to dream big and of course I believe in dreams. 🙂 Thank you! So I’ll go dream?

G: What the ____ are you waiting here for? Get going and dream! I’ll take a nap now, too much coaching for a day. 🙂

Did you really understand what God and that employee talked about? You see, I sort of went into a hypnotic state and so don’t know what they were upto. I don’t even know this much about the power of dreams, so God alone must have written all those dialogues down. 🙂

Anyway, in God we trust, so believe in dreams! And make sure you dream about your ideal life today!